Another cog in the culture industry

September 05, 2013

On Translating Wagner - #1

In an earlier post I mentioned that I had signed a contract for a new translation of Richard Wagner's Opera and Drama. Since it's my intention to keep my readers informed about my projects, I thought that I should post updates to their own category. So from now on all my Wagner posts will be collected in the Richard Wagner category. That way, I can keep them separate from my posts about my progress on my book about Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.

The good news is that my translation is underway and that I'm making progress. The bad news is that Wagner's prose is often atrocious, even as bad as Hegel's at times. So it's slow going. I've translated the preface to the first edition as well as the introduction. Now I'm working on part one.

When I find the time, I'll post a few passages and discuss how I translated them.